Horticulture and Crop Production
Horticulture covers fruits, vegetables, flowers and plantation crops, along with the field operations that decide yield and quality.
Classification
Pomology deals with fruits, olericulture with vegetables, floriculture with flowers, arboriculture with trees, sericulture with silk and apiculture with bees. Horticulture crops generally return more per hectare but need assured irrigation and market linkage.
Propagation and planting geometry
- Sexual propagation by seed is used for papaya, tomato and brinjal.
- Asexual propagation: cutting (sugarcane, rose), layering (guava, air layering in litchi), grafting and budding (mango, citrus, ber), suckers (banana), tissue culture (banana, strawberry).
- Plants per hectare = 10,000 / (row-to-row spacing x plant-to-plant spacing, both in metres).
Madhya Pradesh belts
Burhanpur and Khandwa form the banana belt of the Narmada valley; Malwa is known for onion, garlic and potato; Chhindwara and Sagar grow citrus and vegetables.
Worked example
Banana planted at 2 m x 2 m: each plant occupies 4 sq m, so 10,000 / 4 = 2,500 plants per hectare. Widening the spacing to 2 m x 3 m gives 6 sq m per plant and only 1,667 plants. This arithmetic is the reason high-density planting raises early yield per hectare.
Protected cultivation and irrigation
Polyhouse for off-season vegetables and flowers, plastic mulch for moisture conservation and weed suppression, and drip with fertigation under PMKSY 'Per Drop More Crop'.
Traps
- Dividing 10,000 by spacing quoted in centimetres without converting to metres.
- Treating banana as a seed-propagated crop; it is raised from suckers or tissue culture.
- Confusing training, which builds the frame, with pruning, which removes shoots to balance growth.